What I been doin'....

 

Gardening, mowing, Bible study, and swimming, that's what.  I've kind of ignored my blog just a little bit.  This morning, real early (6 am) we went to take care of my sister's yard.  I was getting ready to mow, and hubby said look at the sunrise--so I took a pic!

I never tire of a beautiful sunrise or sunset.

 

I finished up my Isaiah part 1 for the spring.......

 

and this is my Summer study--Wa-hoo!  I love it. Two more lessons.  In August we start part 2 of Isaiah.

 

I've got lots of watering going on in the front....

( see the neighbor's cat?)

and in the back.

 

Lastly, I've been swimming---just look at that water.

Makes me want to jump in just looking at it.



Brazil Nut Fob

 

I decided to do a picture tutorial of my scissors fob.  It is just a smaller version of the thimble holder on the right.

 

I call it a Brazil Nut Fob because it is shaped like that particular nut.  I drew three arcs on a 2.75" circle cut out of a yogurt lid, then cut them out.

Next I cut out three more only slightly smaller, about 1/8" to 1/16" all the way around.

Then I traced around all six of them on the back side of two colors of fabric.  The three larger ones in one fabric and the three smaller ones in another fabric, leaving room to cut them out with 1/4" added all the way around for a seam allowance.  After cutting out all six pieces of fabric, run a row of running stitch around the middle of the seam allowance, then pull the stitching, gathering it up around the plastic piece--as you see in the first two pictures below.  I ran a couple more rows of stitching around in the seam allowance before knotting the thread and cutting it off.

 

The third picture shows a small one and a larger one placed gathered edges together.  Stitch the two pieces together for a unit.

 

For the first unit I add a twisted cord of floss on the end between the two before stitching them together.  This will be the bottom piece of the fob.  Stitch two more units like the third picture.  Stitch the three units together (one to each side of the bottom unit) leaving the top edges unstitched.

 

(The middle picture shows how you stitch them together; I used a small ladder stitch.)



With the top edges not stitched together you can squeeze the ends together and it pops open for a small storage area.

The Fourth

 

Our Fourth was celebrated with our Grand Daughter, Grace's B-day party.

She decorated her own cupcakes beautifully.

 

Erin taught the kids how to do balloon tying.  They made a sword, a dog, and lastly they made a very cute flower.

 

How cute is that?

 

 After eating hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, cole slaw, chips, baked beans, cake and ice cream we went to a fireworks display.  Jeff loaded up lawn chairs on his trailer, and we enjoyed the fireworks on his trailer--it was like a deck in the middle of a grassy field.  It was rather cool though, but fortunately we had blankets with us.  The fourth of July cool?  Wow!

It was a beautiful show.

 

I made a collage of some of the fireworks we saw.